digital creative

Technology

Storyline - a proposed service in 2009 and the current Facebook Template for a Timeline

So it seems that Facebook is finally taking it’s Timelines feature out of Beta (now in full production mode) and pretty soon is going to be forcing those of us who haven’t bothered to changeover, to have one. Why have they devoted so much energy to this seemingly trivial feature… and what happened to those services that already existed for creating personal timelines? About 3 years ago I did do some research into the ‘Timeline’ services available on the internet with a view to developing a standalone service for a major broadcaster. So what insights does that give me?

All I want for Xmas is … well something better than my Apple TV! I’m kinda kicking myself that no sooner had I decided I would NOT take the plunge and get Sky installed OR Virgin … then Virgin announced that they were shipping TiVo boxes as their response to Sky+! I’ve always been a massive fan of TiVo and to date I think it has given me the best experience that broadcast programming could offer me: TiVo went off and found what I liked and then I could watch it when I liked and pause / fast forward / rewind at will. I even liked the cute ‘tic-toc’ sounds the UI made. However, as a result of my non-decisions, what I actually HAVE is just a standard Freeview set-up augmented by (in the loosest sense of the word) my Apple TV. I couldn’t see any benefit to BT Vision’s offering no matter how many times I spoke to them or read their spiel online. So all that being said … what would be my ideal set up?

The autumn of 2010 saw an enhancement and augmentation of the user based widgets – more Facebook integration, News Feeds, Personalised alerts etc – The Summer of 2011 saw the next release implemented. The user flows have been re-architected and generally there is a much stronger focus on selling tickets and thus wayfinding and promotional messaging to that effect.

So yes we’ve had a lot of focus on Facebook recently … from the media industry in general (when was the last time you saw a TV or poster ad with a good old-fashioned but boring simple WWW URL ?) to the specifics of suddenly feeling that the Livemusic “Like” page is a bit ‘unloved’. It wasn’t even that long ago we didn’t have a Facebook ‘Fan’ Page at all (as they were called back in the heady days of 2010!) I think you’d have be living in a cave not to notice that Zuckerberg and pals have been making a serious land-grab for large swathes of cyberspace in the last 18 months or so …

iPlayer is great, but really, why am I still having to watch it on my laptop? Why can’t I get it on my TV? Well the good news is that iPlayer _is_ finally going to be available on FreeSat in 2010! Hurrah! Of course Digital Cable services (e.g. Virgin Media) have already been enjoying the iPlayers, not just from the BBC but also 4OD and ITV iPLayer as well, for some time now … I guess we’ll never get it on my current Freeview setup though!

With the introduction of Google Wave, following Google Docs and the Google Apps suite of productivity and collaborative working tools released over the last year, the release of Google Chrome is truly one of the most serious ventures in challenging Microsoft’s dominance of the way 90% of the population use their computers.

This is the recent mailer and e-shot I put together for Viatel. Viatel are one of the biggest independent ISP service providers focusing on business-to-business only connectivity and wanted to promote their Next Generation Access platform (part of BT’s 21st Century network program which is launching in early September 2009)